First off, I found it entertaining that the author referenced N. Katherine Hayles’ book How we Became Posthuman since I just finished writing a paper on it. I also found it amusing that she considered the book to be “eloquent”… I say informative and interesting yes, eloquent however, not so much. The main idea from this article I found most interesting and wanted to discuss is the idea of interfaces that all us to pass a “virtual experience” line and connect our bodies more immediately and actually to the game in which we are playing. Not only do these interfaces allow us a more textualized experience, they can and sometimes do project our movements up on the screen for us to visualize. This experience is all together un-worldly because it is something with which we are unfamiliar. While we have felt the action of throwing a ball before, we have no seen ourselves throwing the ball at the time we perform the act. It can be like an out of body experience. However the projection becomes an interesting dilemma between us, a part of us, or completely separate from us. In other games where we are merely moving a character that looks nothing like us, it can be much easier to extricate it from us and say it is just a game, we are just controlling it. But when you add the fact that they are moving as we moving and doing as we do when we do it, how can we separate it from us? Should we? It is not 3 dimensional and technically it cannot feel, have the emotions or personality that we do, but it mimics us. Perhaps we can refer to it as a colorful shadow or reflection. Showing and mimicking the outer physical us, but not even remotely tapping into the inner soulful us. But this is just one idea, one though on the topic. Others could argue for different explanations or reasons, but frankly, just as I believe in religion I believe in the interactivity of video games, I don’t believe that an outsider can judge or determine for another what the other is experiencing or feeling. That person must decide for themselves, and it can be different, it should be different, and that’s okay.

Overall this article was insightful and interesting, however there is one quote on page 197 that I very much disagree with. “Ironically, the reader paging through the Balzac or Dickens, or, for that matter, Judith Krantz, has entered into roughly the same immersive state, enjoying the same high, continuous cognitive load, as the runty kid firing fixedly away at Space Invaders“. While I do attend to the fact that the first video games had a more fixed nature, similar to that of a book, I strongly feel that the immersive quality about that is/was much greater then the simple reading of text. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think that reading can be very immersive and encompassing however, the physicality of a video game, the actual movements that are required to be part of the interactive catapult the video in the immersive score far beyond that of a novel.

Also in this article is a quote by Csikszentmihalyi on the idea of “flow” in video games. The idea that we become completely absorbed and lose sense of self, time, and reality become distorted. I see evidence of this every-time a friend or family member beings to play a video game that they enjoy. It is an alternate reality that allows the person playing to escape from the constraints, responsibilities, etc. of their usual life. It takes them away and lets them be someone else for a while, with different problems (or none at all) different expectations, different everything if they so choose. It can be very freeing and tieing this into religion, acts as a sacred space or ritual in that it removes them from the profane mundane ordinary everyday life.